All Open Redirect Vulnerabilities are intended behavior? If so, why patch them later?

From report of CNET, Yahoo’s users were attacked by redirection vulnerabilities. “Yahoo.com visitors over the last few days may have been served with malware via the Yahoo ad network, according to Fox IT, a security firm in the Netherlands. Users visiting pages with the malicious ads were redirected to sites armed with code that exploits vulnerabilities in Java and installs a variety of different malware. "http://www.cnet.com/news/yahoo-users-exposed-to-malware-attack/

Moreover, since Yahoo is well-known worldwide. these vulnerabilities can be used to attack other companies such as Google, eBay, The New York Times, Amazon, Godaddy, Alibaba, Netease, e.g. by bypassing their Open Redirect filters (Covert Redirect). These cyber security bug problems have not been patched. Other similar web and computer flaws will be published in the near future.

Both Yahoo and Yahoo Japan online web application has a computer cyber security bug problem. It can be exploited by Unvalidated Redirects and Forwards (URL Redirection) attacks. This could allow a user to create a specially crafted URL, that if clicked, would redirect a victim from the intended legitimate web site to an arbitrary web site of the attacker’s choosing. Such attacks are useful as the crafted URL initially appear to be a web page of a trusted site. This could be leveraged to direct an unsuspecting user to a web page containing attacks that target client side software such as a web browser or document rendering programs.

BugTraq is a full disclosure moderated mailing list for the *detailed* discussion and announcement of computer security vulnerabilities: what they are, how to exploit them, and how to fix them. The below things be posted to the Bugtraq list: (a) Information on computer or network related security vulnerabilities (UNIX, Windows NT, or any other). (b) Exploit programs, scripts or detailed processes about the above. (c) Patches, workarounds, fixes. (d) Announcements, advisories or warnings. (e) Ideas, future plans or current works dealing with computer/network security. (f) Information material regarding vendor contacts and procedures. (g) Individual experiences in dealing with above vendors or security organizations. (h) Incident advisories or informational reporting. (i) New or updated security tools. A large number of the fllowing web securities have been published here, Injection, Broken Authentication and Session Management, Cross-Site Scripting (XSS), Insecure Direct Object References, Security Misconfiguration, Sensitive Data Exposure, Missing Function Level Access Control, Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF), Using Components with Known Vulnerabilities, Unvalidated Redirects and Forwards. It also publishes suggestions, advisories, solutions details related to Open Redirect vulnerabilities and cyber intelligence recommendations.

(1) Yahoo.com Open Redirect

Domain:yahoo.com

“Yahoo Inc. (styled as Yahoo!) is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Sunnyvale, California. It is globally known for its Web portal, search engine Yahoo Search, and related services, including Yahoo Directory, Yahoo Mail, Yahoo News, Yahoo Finance, Yahoo Groups, Yahoo Answers, advertising, online mapping, video sharing, fantasy sports and its social media website. It is one of the most popular sites in the United States. According to news sources, roughly 700 million people visit Yahoo websites every month. Yahoo itself claims it attracts more than half a billion consumers every month in more than 30 languages. Yahoo was founded by Jerry Yang and David Filo in January 1994 and was incorporated on March 1, 1995. Marissa Mayer, a former Google executive, serves as CEO and President of the company." (Wikipedia)

“Yahoo! JAPAN Corporation (ヤフージャパン株式会社 Yafū Japan Kabushiki-gaisha?) is a Japanese internet company formed as a joint venture between the American internet company Yahoo! and the Japanese internet company SoftBank. It is headquartered at Midtown Tower in the Tokyo Midtown complex in Akasaka, Minato, Tokyo. Yahoo! Japan was listed on JASDAQ in November 1997. In January 2000, it became the first stock in Japanese history to trade for more than ¥100 million per share. The company was listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange in October 2003 and became part of the Nikkei 225 stock market index in 2005. Yahoo! Japan acquired the naming rights for the Fukuoka Dome in 2005, renaming the dome as the “Fukuoka Yahoo! Japan Dome". The “Yahoo Dome" is the home field for the Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks, a professional baseball team majority owned by SoftBank." (Wikipedia)

“ESPN (originally an acronym for Entertainment and Sports Programming Network) is a U.S.-based global cable and satellite television channel that is owned by ESPN Inc., a joint venture between The Walt Disney Company (which operates the network, through its 80% controlling ownership interest) and Hearst Corporation (which holds the remaining 20% interest). The channel focuses on sports-related programming including live and recorded event telecasts, sports news and talk shows, and other original programming.

ESPN broadcasts primarily from studio facilities located in Bristol, Connecticut. The network also operates offices in Miami, New York City, Seattle, Charlotte, and Los Angeles. John Skipper currently serves as president of ESPN, a position he has held since January 1, 2012. While ESPN is one of the most successful sports networks, it has been subject to criticism, which includes accusations of biased coverage, conflict of interest, and controversies with individual broadcasters and analysts. ESPN headquarters in Bristol, Connecticut. As of February 2015, ESPN is available to approximately 94,396,000 paid television households (81.1% of households with at least one television set) in the United States. In addition to the flagship channel and its seven related channels in the United States, ESPN broadcasts in more than 200 countries, operating regional channels in Australia, Brazil, Latin America and the United Kingdom, and owning a 20% interest in The Sports Network (TSN) as well as its five sister networks and NHL Network in Canada."(Wikipedia)

Vulnerability description:

Espn.go.com has a cyber security bug problem. It is vulnerable to XSS (Cross Site Scripting) and Dest Redirect Privilege Escalation (Open Redirect) attacks.

Those vulnerabilities are very dangerous. Since they happen at ESPN’s “login" & “register" pages that are credible. Attackers can abuse those links to mislead ESPN’s users. The success rate of attacks may be high.

During the tests, besides the links given above, large number of ESPN’s links are vulnerable to those attacks.

“The Full Disclosure mailing list is a public forum for detailed discussion of vulnerabilities and exploitation techniques, as well as tools, papers, news, and events of interest to the community. FD differs from other security lists in its open nature and support for researchers’ right to decide how to disclose their own discovered bugs. The full disclosure movement has been credited with forcing vendors to better secure their products and to publicly acknowledge and fix flaws rather than hide them. Vendor legal intimidation and censorship attempts are not tolerated here!" A great many of the fllowing web securities have been published here, Injection, Broken Authentication and Session Management, Cross-Site Scripting (XSS), Insecure Direct Object References, Security Misconfiguration, Sensitive Data Exposure, Missing Function Level Access Control, Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF), Using Components with Known Vulnerabilities, Unvalidated Redirects and Forwards. It also publishes suggestions, advisories, solutions details related to XSS and Open Redirect vulnerabilities and cyber intelligence recommendations.

(1) XSS Web Security Vulnerability

XSS may allow a remote attacker to create a specially crafted request that would execute arbitrary script code in a user’s browser session within the trust relationship between their browser and the server. Base on Acunetix, exploited XSS is commonly used to achieve the following malicious results

From OWASP, an open redirect is an application that takes a parameter and redirects a user to the parameter value without any validation. This vulnerability is used in phishing attacks to get users to visit malicious sites without realizing it. This could allow a user to create a specially crafted URL, that if clicked, would redirect a victim from the intended legitimate web site to an arbitrary web site of the attacker’s choosing. Such attacks are useful as the crafted URL initially appear to be a web page of a trusted site. This could be leveraged to direct an unsuspecting user to a web page containing attacks that target client side software such as a web browser or document rendering programs.

Popular Weather Channel web site (Weather.com) has been found to be vulnerable to a reflected Cross-Site Scripting flaw, according to security researcher Wang Jing’s research. The vulnerability lies in that Weather.com does not filter malicious script codes when constructing HTML tags with its URLs. This way, an attacker just adds a malicious script at the end of the URL and executes it.

“If The Weather Channel’s users were exploited, their Identity may be stolen,” Jing said via email. “At the same time, attackers may use the vulnerability to spy users’ habits, access sensitive information, alter browser functionality, perform denial of service attacks, etc.”

Wang Jing is a Ph.D student from School of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. He found that at list 76.3% of Weather Channel website links were vulnerable to XSS attacks. Attackers just need to add scripts at end of Weather Channel’s URLs. Then the scripts will be executed.

Popular ESPN website (espn.go.com) has been found to be vulnerable to multiple serious XSS and Dest Redirect Privilege Escalation security vulnerabilities according to Wang Jing, a mathematics student from the School of Physical and Mathematical Sciences at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.

Wang found a large number of ESPN’s credible links were vulnerable to XSS and Dest Redirect Privilege Escalation attacks. These vulnerabilities occur at ESPN’s “login” & “register” pages.

ESPN is one of the most common U.S.-based cable and satellite TV channel with close to 100 million subscribers. Its Alexa global rank is 63 and US rank is 14. Based on eBizMBA, “As of December 1, 2014, ESPN has an estimated 80,000,000 unique monthly visitors.” At the same time, ESPN broadcasts in more than 200 countries.

Wang posted his findings on the Full Disclosure forum. He wrote that he had reported the issues to ESPN in early May 2014 but the vulnerabilities are still unpatched. According to Wang, “Those vulnerabilities are very dangerous. Since they happen at ESPN’s “login” & “register” pages that are credible. Attackers can abuse those links to mislead ESPN’s users. The success rate of attacks may be high.“

Proof of concept videos have also been released on YouTube to illustrate an attack.

According to OWASP, “XSS allows attackers to execute scripts in the victims browser which can hijack user sessions, deface websites or redirect the user to malicious sites.” While Dest Redirect Privilege Escalation “is used in phishing attacks to get users to visit malicious sites without realizing it.”

If ESPN’s users were exploited, attackers can get their identity. Those attacks can also be used to steal password, perform denial of service attacks, spy users’ habits, alter browser functionality, access sensitive information and so on.

Wang wrote his tests were using Firefox (33.0) in Ubuntu (14.04) and IE (8.0. 7601) in Windows 8. And the attack could work without a user being logged in.